Who Do You Trust?

There was a game show hosted by Johnny Carson in the early sixties called "Who Do You Trust?" (Should have been whom but I digress.)  In our time as a rationale for war who you trust is not a game show. 

I do not like war as it tends to kill lots of human beings many innocent and so I was initially against an air strike within Syria. I am still troubled by it not because the bestial behavior of ISIS, a brutally warped monstrosity, does not warrant elimination but because I simply do not know who is telling me the truth within the maze of anarchistic and religious conflict in the explosive Middle East of which this nation has been an integral and in 2002 an offending part.  Is ISIS an existential threat to the west?  Truly, is it?

The lies spun for war in this nation have been many.  I will not enumerate them now but they surely include Bush's uber lie of WMD in Iraq creating the current never-ending explosions in that neck of the woods. Some say our historical memory is short and filled with historical fluff told by the winners.

THIS time the rationales for Fear, Inc, are ISIS, ISIL and the Khorasan Group (sounds like an insurance company.)  The war may and perhaps will, as the president said, go on indefinitely.  The true dilemma is whom can I trust?

Our commander-in-chief has a brain and is surprisingly this time finding allied support from a variety of Arab states who each have their own agenda.  The words of war protestors "no more war" are like dust in the wind.  They disappear into the cacophonous sound of the media stratosphere. The media talking heads blather on with few complex points made in the space of five minutes experts are given for each topic.  Can they help it if our McDonald's nation wants news in the space of time it takes to cook a hamburger and has no patience for complexity?  If points are made by "experts" the experts often get paid handsomely as mouthpieces for one defense industry or another which is not transparent. 

Who can I trust?  I suspect I will never know so, yet again, I acquiesce to war.  In that neck of the chaotic woods filled with many who hate this nation rightfully or wrongfully can one take the chance that this president is wrong or worse lying? 

Whether the nations of the Middle East survive and build democratic states is of no concern to me.  BUT what is of concern to me is that this nation not suffer another attack and with it the possibility of nuclear peril. 

At least for now (I reserve the right to change my opinion) I will take the words of our president as truth and support him because our very lives and this nation's existence depend upon his not lying to us. 

Whom do I trust?  I still do not really know do you?